Environmental Working Group’s researchers have created Good Food on a Tight Budget, a science-based shopping guide of the top 100 foods that are healthy, cheap, clean and green. Here are the files for our webinar.

The Environmental Working Group’s new food guide can help. The guide shows shoppers how to manage their grocery costs while reducing their exposure to toxic chemicals and rediscovering the savory pleasures of nutritious stews, soups and salads.

The Environmental Working Group has always urged people to eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, organic or conventional – and we always will. A diet heavy in produce and light in processed foods, red meat and soda could well help you live a longer, healthier life.

High crop prices and unlimited crop insurance subsidies contributed to the loss of more than 23 million acres of grassland, shrub land and wetlands between 2008 and 2011, new research by Environmental Working Group and Defenders of Wildlife shows.

In the face of crippling drought across the Corn Belt, Congress is considering funding a disaster aid package with cuts to climate friendly conservation programs. Even as extreme drought wreaks havoc on crops and communities across the Midwest, government officials are now confident that they can link recent bouts of extreme weather to man-made climate change.

Last fall, House and Senate Agriculture Committee leaders tried to insert a “secret farm bill” in the super committee’s un-amendable deficit reduction package. They failed. Now some of those same leaders are trying to evade a floor vote by the full House by extending the current law for a year, as a pretense to negotiate a five-year farm bill with the Senate, which has already passed its version of the $1 trillion bill.

Although the future of the farm bill remains unclear, the leadership of the House of Representatives effectively rejected a proposal by the House Agriculture Committee that would have cut nutrition assistance and environmental programs to help finance lavish new subsidies for the largest farm businesses.

The Alliance for Food and Farming, an agribusiness group representing the bulk of conventional produce growers in California - and seemingly the only organization in existence that doesn’t want people to have information about which fruits and veggies come with multiple pesticides - sent me a list of questions after the release of Environmental Working Group’s 2012 Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce.

Sarah (not her real name), was usually one of the best students I met while teaching 8th grade math in a New Orleans public school. When I asked a question, her hand darted into the air as she politely, and more importantly quietly, waited to be called upon. Her answers were rarely off-target. The questions she raised were thought-provoking. She understood what she read. She refused to be defeated by my most challenging math problems.

Unlimited crop insurance subsidies lead growers to make planting decisions that are bad for the environment, two of the nation’s most respected agricultural economists conclude in a newly published paper.

Late Wednesday night, July 11, the House Agriculture Committee added an amendment by Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) to the farm bill that would severely limit states’ authority to regulate conditions or standards of agricultural production.

The budget-busting farm bill approved by the House Agriculture Committee late Wednesday night is quite simply the worst piece of farm and food legislation in decades. The bill will feed fewer people, help fewer farmers, do less to promote healthy diets and weaken environmental protections – and it will cost far more than congressional bean counters say.

On the same day that the House will vote to end health insurance subsidies for low income Americans, the House Agriculture Committee will vote to increase crop insurance subsidies for the largest and most profitable mega farms – and will cut nutrition assistance programs to pay for it.

The farm bill proposed yesterday by House Agriculture Committee leaders would cut funds for nutrition programs and the environment to help finance new price and revenue guarantees and increase insurance subsidies for the largest and most successful farm businesses.

Everyone who eats should take a moment to thank 11 senators who proposed farm bill amendments designed to ensure that our farm and food policies help more farmers, the environment and the hungry at less cost to the taxpayer.

EWG issued the following statement by Scott Faber, Vice President for Government Affairs, on the Senate's failure to pass Senator Gillibrand's amendment to reduce subsidies to crop insurance companies to restore proposed cuts to feeding assistance programs and to increase funding for the fresh fruit and vegetable snack program.